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Plato's craftsman and Philo's model

Connection type: parallel tradition · 2 passages

Plato's Timaeus asks after which model the cosmos was made; Philo answers with an incorporeal model formed on the image of God, a younger likeness of the elder creation. The parallel is in the question — model and copy — not in wording.

Passages side by side

“Now to discover the Maker and Father of this Universe were a task indeed; and having discovered Him, to declare Him unto all men were a thing impossible. However, let us return and inquire further concerning the Cosmos,—after which of the Models did its Architect construct it?”

Plato — Timaeus · Section 29

“for God, as apprehending beforehand, as a God must do, that there could not exist a good imitation without a good model, and that of the things perceptible to the external senses nothing could be faultless which was not fashioned with reference to some archetypal idea conceived by the intellect, when he had determined to create this visible world, previously formed that one which is perceptible only by the intellect, in order that so using an incorporeal model formed as far as possible on the image of God, he might then make this corporeal world, a younger likeness of the elder creation, which should embrace as many different genera perceptible to the external senses, as the other world contains of those which are visible only to the intellect.”

Philo of Alexandria — On the Creation of the World · Sections 1–25

Every passage above is quoted verbatim from the library’s own corpus file for that work (Septuagint passages from the Swete text); long passages are shown as sentences or marked excerpts, never paraphrased. The connection type is descriptive: “direct quotation” means the later text names or quotes its source; “allusion” means it names the figure or scene; “parallel tradition” means the texts retell the same episode or wording, with no dependence claimed.

Subjects

Creation & cosmology, Philosophy of nature

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